for those who still believe that the f 35 will be a slow, non-maneuvrable plane…

Some quotes from CodeOne magazine (http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/2007/articles/apr_07/flighttest/index.html):

The thrust impressed me most. The first flight profile called for the F-35 to immediately go to 15,000 feet. I had to keep the speed at 225 knots during the climb since I had to keep the gear down, which limited the maximum speed.

I used nose attitude instead of modulating engine thrust to control airspeed during the climb to 15,000 feet. In other words, I had to raise the nose to slow down the airplane. I took off and started pulling back on the stick. I had to keep pulling back to stop from accelerating over the 225-knot limit. So I reached a rather steep angle, about twenty-five degrees of pitch. The steep angle, witnessed by the crowds on the ground, highlighted the raw power I was experiencing in the cockpit. The thrust surprised me. Not in the sense of “Gee, how am I going to handle all of this power?” But more like, “Wow, this is more than I expected.”

I continue to be impressed with the performance of the aircraft. The F-16s flying chase don’t have near the fuel capacity or payload capability as the F-35. The Lightning II does very well in comparison. For example, the F-35 often forces the chase aircraft into afterburner when it is in military power

Another strong impression is that the airplane wants to fly a lot faster than we are allowed to fly at this point in the flight test program. Most of the time we fly at about thirty to forty percent of available thrust.

In the F-35 cockpit, the helmet-mounted display, combined with the aircraft’s distributed aperture system, or DAS, alleviates the need for night vision goggles. The DAS gives the pilot total situational awareness 360 degrees around the aircraft. In particular, DAS enables the pilot to see everything on the ground virtually through the structure of the aircraft—essentially providing a transparent floor. In a close air support situation, the pilot can locate and off-boresight target the enemy, come around and release weapons, and thus minimize exposure to ground threats. No time is wasted reacquiring the target after a bombing or strafing pass.

The Northrop Grumman AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar is common to all F-35 variants. The radar, which has an interleaved search-and-track function, allows the F-35 pilot to engage enemy fighters or low-flying helicopters while detecting, identifying, and directing weapons on fixed and moving ground targets. The APG-81 has nearly three times the range of existing radars and provides the pilot with ultrahigh resolution, synthetic aperture radar imagery.